After a difficult start at Chelsea, Nicolas Anelka has established himself this season. Photograph: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images

Does anyone remember Claude Anelka's brief career in British football? Raith Rovers had the peculiar idea of appointing one of Nicolas's infamous brothers as their manager in 2004, as a consequence of him offering a £300,000 investment to any club who would give him such a position. Eight matches into this experiment, Raith's record read won zero, drawn one, lost seven. He was not exactly Monsieur Populaire at Stark's Park, and complained: 'It was very hard to listen to the abuse and jeering that the fans showered upon me, week in, week out.' He left. Raith were relegated. Another tale from the strange world of the Anelka brothers.

It is instructive that little is heard these days from Claude or the other Anelka brother, Didier. For the early years of Nicolas's nomadic, often turbulent, career, the pair acted as his agents and advisers, engineering so many lucrative transfers that Nicolas has the distinction of being the most paid-for player in football history. More than £85million has been spent securing his services. A sizeable cut, and a fair amount of publicity, went to his siblings. Recently, Nicolas has become professionally distanced from Claude and Didier. In France it is not seen as a coincidence that the Chelsea striker has now emerged as a steadier, more laid-back person. He is even perceived as more open-minded. He is increasingly sociable. He has married and become a father. All in all, he is as settled as he has ever been.

In terms of goalscoring, he has never started a season so successfully - 12 goals from 13 Premier League matches. His manager defends him against sniping that because only one of these has been the first of the match he is effective only when play is stretched. 'No. He works for the club, he works for the team,' Luiz Felipe Scolari says. 'If there is a chance for him to score, OK. If not, he works hard, which makes him happy and me happy.'

The goals have helped him to achieve something perhaps even he did not envisage when he went to Stamford Bridge - he has nipped ahead of Didier Drogba in the strikers' pecking order. With the Ivorian powerhouse unavailable for much of this season, compounding injury by causing the sort of hassles Scolari could do without, Anelka has been quietly successful, game after game after game.

For Anelka to be perceived as a goody-two-shoes makes a refreshing change. His expression when he was substituted after scoring in the Champions League in Bordeaux in midweek was revealing. Once he would have worn a glum face, a studied, thousand-yard stare or, at the very best, a blank look; this time Anelka the renaissance man was beaming.

According to Scolari, the change in Anelka, who will be 30 next March, is partly down to playing him in a position he is comfortable with, but mostly it is a question of mental attitude. 'It is psychological. Nicolas is a calm person, too calm. To get the best from him it was important to light the fire.'

Scolari faces a considerable early test of his man-management qualities now that Anelka has earned the right to be in the starting line-up. Chelsea really need both Drogba and Anelka available and committed to the cause to maintain their trophy hunt until May. In the current system, playing with one spearhead supported by the midfield creators, juggling these two egos is not an enviable task. Ray Wilkins, with his usual diplomacy, described the competition for the striker's position as 'a healthy rivalry'. We shall see.

It is certainly too early to dismiss the 'Incredible Sulk' persona altogether. Chelsea fans have not forgotten Anelka's admission, after missing the crucial penalty in last May's Champions League final, that he did not volunteer to take one of the opening five kicks because he felt outraged to have been sent on as a substitute to play out of position without any warm-up. He was reported as saying: 'I have come on basically as a right-back and you want me to take a penalty?' With a wage of £90,000 going into his bank account that week, it was one hell of a rhetorical question.

As recently as a month ago, most Chelsea fans did not speak particularly fondly of Anelka. But he has slowly won people around - not only for the sheer number of goals he has contributed, also for the hard work he puts in for the team. He chases and tracks back with impressive persistence. John Terry, his captain, summed it up: 'I'm happy Nicolas plays in my team. I wouldn't want to play against him.'

But who would have bet on Anelka staking such a strong claim to be Chelsea's main man in attack? Over the years, a succession of managers has tried, with no small degree of exasperation, to coax the maximum from him. The focus and consistency he is now showing has been a long time coming. Vicente Del Bosque, his coach at Real Madrid when Anelka had just emerged from his teens but was still bolshy, always admired his presence but felt he 'lacked maturity to take on the challenge of a club like that'.

Gérard Houllier, who worked with him briefly at Liverpool, is impressed. 'Actually I am not surprised by his explosion,' he says. 'That comes with age. He is without doubt one of the most gifted players of his generation - in front of goal, one on one, perhaps the most gifted. He certainly has more desire now. Why didn't he explode before now? Maybe he was missing stability.' He played only 19 times for Real. He managed just a few months at Liverpool. In his nomadic career he has changed clubs nine times in 13 years.

Anelka first caused a commotion when he was in the vanguard of Arsène Wenger's now well established recruiting routine: sign up talented teenagers before they became prohibitively expensive. The French authorities were furious that a young player schooled in their system could be spirited overseas before he had even had the chance to make an impression in their own league.

He arrived in London from Paris Saint-Germain in 1997, a mixture of precocious talent and painful shyness, and was almost immediately misunderstood. His cheerless expression won him few friends, even if there were times when his ferocious pace and sharp, early shooting left people awestruck.

Anelka was a product of France's Clairfontaine academy, where he grew up in the year below Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet. The three hotshots lined up together in the same team that played in the under-21 World Cup in 1997. A year later, the elder two were part of the victorious squad in the World Cup proper. Anelka, despite an excellent season with Arsenal in which he was instrumental in winning the Double, did not make the cut.

He has spent most of his career overshadowed by Henry and Trezeguet, but at the moment has the edge over his two friends, both of whom give the impression of being past their prime at a time when Anelka has hit a peak. The French public are very impressed with Anelka's statistics this season. 'Where is it going to end - 30, 40, 50 goals?' asked an incredulous article about Anelka's metamorphosis in L'Equipe

They see it as a straight fight between him and Lyon's young buck, Karim Benzema, to partner Henry up front for Les Bleus. There is a typically lively debate going on. Most punters have been wowed by the fact Anelka is the Premier League's top scorer. Most pundits are a little more sceptical, noting that a scruffy finish against West Brom or Stoke is no indication of alchemic powers. In fact, as L'Equipe pointed out last week, there are two faces of Anelka: one has a great scoring record against small teams, the other has a poor scoring record against top opposition.

A goal against Arsenal today would be timely, and might help him in the task of finally shaking off the criticism that he has never quite made the most of his talent. This idea has followed him around - from the days when he behaved badly enough for the Real Madrid president to lament he was 'sick in the head', through the calamitous second spell at Paris Saint-Germain, to five years in his mid-twenties spent outside the European football elite at Manchester City, Fenerbahce and Bolton.

But he has always had something alluring to top clubs. After all, not many players have represented three of England's Big Four. Anelka has changed considerably from the shy boy who did not know where to look when he arrived for his first game in English football. He was gobsmacked by Ian Wright, in charge of blasting music into the dressing room and filling the place with noise. Then he noticed that John Lukic, instead of coming out for the warm-up, preferred to sink into a hot bath. It was all very different from what he was used to.

Today he faces Arsenal - a team he scored against plenty of times in the colours of Manchester City and Bolton - with fulfilment of his rare talent closer at hand than it has ever been. They see it as a straight fight between